Description

Credits:

Motohiro Nakashima

Hiroshima-born Motohiro Nakajima’s first new album in 12 years is a pastoral and colorful soundscape that expresses a universal desire for light in the darkness and beauty in the melancholy. The new album “Gathering The Light” by Motohiro Nakajima, a guitarist from Hiroshima, was inspired by the documentary film “Toward the Faint Light” by Takashi Ota, an educational researcher. The album is an instrumental music that has a folkloric yet progressive impression, with a pastoral atmosphere created by Nakajima’s fingerpicking style guitar, combined with the effects of string arrangements, flute, and saxophone by Shin ARAKI. The album’s title track, “Gathering the Light,” has a neo-medieval feel with its rich melody, while “The End Isn’t the End” is a wonderful cocktail of minimal chords and effects juxtaposed with rustic, bouncy guitar and glockenspiel. The End Isn’t the End.Paddle,” inspired by Ully Schulwitz’s “Yoake,” features simple yet complex guitars, with a piano and high-pitched mandolin in response; “Reflection” features sun-drenched arpeggios, layered flutes, and a childlike glockenspiel; and ” Reliable Ambiguity,” the effects-heavy sound waves create an atmosphere akin to a sunset that has set. Light is always gathered at every edge of this work, which brings together a variety of sounds and field recordings, such as the sound of insects in a child’s playground and waves crashing on the shore, to create warm colors and soft textures. It is the kind of light that lovingly brings forth the beauty that emerges from melancholy, such as when gazing at a changing landscape in the sun or relaxing with family.

Tracklisting:

01 STRAINS OF DELIGHT
02 COLORS OF SUNLIGHT
03 REFLECTION
04 SEAGLASS
05 NIGHT RAIN FALLS
06 THE DAWN
07 PADDLE
08 FROM THE MOMENT
09 RELIABLE AMBIGUITY
10 THE DAWN AGAIN
11 THE END ISN’T THE END
12 GATHERING THE LIGHT